Announcing my new website!
I have always wanted an all-encompassing platform for archiving, documenting my projects, and blogging my many journals, and my new website at yannichau.i234.me marks a new milestone for my digital portfolio. It has been something I have been working on and off throughout the past year, and at this stage it is as if the pieces I have been crafting are finally coming together.
A new purpose
My webpage yannichau.github.io/ytc-web has prudently served well as my professional portfolio since early 2020, initially featuring nothing more than a CV and a list of hobbyist projects descriptions. This is still a motivation of maintaining a site, but my life is beyond my academic and professional career. There are many blogs and entries that I would like to document in a public space, which will constitute a bigger part of the new site.
Prettier, and more fun
The arguably best feature of Wordpress is Gutenberg, its built-in block editor. Immersive scrollable full-width images and interactive photo galleries are examples of Gutenberg features for crafting beautiful blogs. With a careful consideration for consistency, I will incorporate colours and styles more frequently to suit the atmosphere of the stories, and to grant the content a greater degree of context.
The fun bit that will be inherited from the previous site is the interactive London Underground map showing where Woodstock has been to! My original website included 2 fun applets — this, as well as a geographical visualisation of COVID cases worldwide which will not be ported to the new site, now that COVID is no longer an epidemic (thankfully!)
Easier
While I am now fairly versed with designing pages with ReactJS and managing a rest API server with NodeJS, it is a hassle dealing with hosting large files like images. I had to host them on a free platform, like imgur, and link them to my database. Finally, Heroku, the platform I used to host my backend on, nailed the coffin for me by suspending their free plan.
In contrast, my new Wordpress platform is highly versatile in terms of the content I can include, and I am currently also experimenting with a plugin that simultaneously publishes my posts to Medium — hitting a bird with two stones (oops — two birds with a stone!)
Where am I?
Hiccups are certainly a common occurence when working with a new platform. The biggest hurdle so far has been actually getting the correct settings to route the website to the internet. As the library of content for the webiste expands and the traffic increases (which will be both a blessing and a curse!), I will have to explore different solutions to enhance the security and efficiency of the website. But I’m sure there’s certainly a lot to look forward to!
Next steps
A series of photographs taken of Samuel at Kwun Tong Ferry Bus Terminal
Originally published at cluelessyanni.